i am wondering why the 7D cannot do higher frame rates.with the super high ISO i would imagine it could do well beyond the 240FPS of the hero 3 as far as lighting.with faster processing i would think it could do much faster FPS.

Different beasts. The 7D is three years old now, in modern tech terms that's ancient. When the 7D came out, 120fps was not even on anybodies radar as a digital shooting format - except with the Red One, which would've set you back quite a bit more than a 7D.

There's all sorts or things that effect what a camera is or is not capable of, including heat dissipation, sensor read-out speed & refresh rate, sampling method, processing power, buffer size, etc, etc. My guess is that the (relatively) ancient 7D is lacking a lot of what is required to shoot proper 720p at 120fps.

The Hero 3, on the other hand, is brand spanking new and has been developed as a special-purpose tool. Action sports is it's primary market and the guys at GoPro have worked hard to deliver a product that meets the needs of the target market. Of course it comes without all the bells and whistles that even an ancient 7D has, like a large sensor, interchangeable lenses, 18mp RAW stills at 8fps, manual everything, etc, etc.

I can only dream, though, that the next generation DSLR's do have 720p at 120fps. Panasonic have introduced it on several of their cameras, and I'm considering buying a FZ200 for that feature alone. If a Canon 70D or 7DmkII shot nice, clean 720p at 120fps, it would definitely make my RED Scarlet dream redundant, at least until clients starts asking me to shoot 4K.

The GoPro was designed from the ground up as an action video camera.The 7D was designed to be a very capable still photo camera with a cinema mode. I wish people would stop calling it a video mode. The cinema mode is designed to allow cinematographers to film things cheaper and with smaller gear than possible traditionally. No matter how much people might want to think of them as a video camera, they aren't.

Also... sensor size from 7D vs hero plus different purposes... the 7D was designed as a sports CAMERA with video as an add-on... the hero is a video camera... nothing more nothing less. Newsflash, I would also say if and when the 7d2 comes out, I wouldn't magically expect 60fps 1080p, 120fps 720, etc...

I knew stamping "4K" on the GoPro and the high framerates would spawn threads like this. Someone was whining earlier that there is no excuse for all DSLR's to have 4K because the GoPro does, as if it were comparable to a RED or something. I got my Hero 3 yesterday and believe me, the 4K looks like complete garbage and was obviously added to fluff the specs. The IQ from a 7D is far superior, that being said it's not really a fair comparison, two totally different cameras.

Basically what everyone else has said (older hardware, stills camera that does video, etc), but also the fact that the resolution on the sensor is vastly larger than the sensor on the GoPro, not to mention the physical size of the sensor and associated heat disipation, pixel read-out timing, etc.

Basically, 2 devices that have drastically different purposes, with one of them happening to be able to do _some_ of the stuff the purpose built device can.

I knew stamping "4K" on the GoPro and the high framerates would spawn threads like this. Someone was whining earlier that there is no excuse for all DSLR's to have 4K because the GoPro does, as if it were comparable to a RED or something. I got my Hero 3 yesterday and believe me, the 4K looks like complete garbage and was obviously added to fluff the specs. The IQ from a 7D is far superior, that being said it's not really a fair comparison, two totally different cameras.

It's still 4k nonetheless, you quote "stamping" like it's not technically. It's a great small camera, that is capable of 4k. The size difference in sensors makes a big factor, but what if you had a sensor 4times larger than RED, would you label RED as "stamping" 4K? Just saying.